Jury Members 2023

Hanneke Scholten is an assistant professor at the University of Twente and co-director of the Games for Emotional and Mental Health (GEMH) Lab. In her PhD project at the RadboudUniversity, she designed and tested a game to help youth quit smoking. In this project, she collaborated with game designers and youth. In her position as postdoctoral researcher at GEMH Lab, she focused on understanding and improving youths’ emotional and mental health through technology. In her current positions at the University of Twente and GEMH Lab she is driven to build interdisciplinary collaborations through which digital experiences can be developed that matter to youth and improve their wellbeing. Furthermore, she strives to implement scientifically proven products in the real-world to have an impact on as many youth as possible. Hanneke is a vocal proponent of the potential impact of interactive media on emotional and mental health. To this end, she has published her work in international journals and delivered over 60 presentations and workshops on this topic to audiences of diverse backgrounds, including the scientific community, parents, youth, teachers, designers, and psychologists.

Joris Dingelstad graduated from the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht with a degree in Game Design in 2022. That same year, he joined HackShield as a Developer and Designer. During his academic journey, he primarily focused on enhancing the game experience to make it more pleasing and satisfying for players. At HackShield, he leverages this knowledge, aiming to design educational interactions for players. Within the team, he applies his expertise to craft systems that empower his colleagues to work, design, and create with greater efficiency.Furthermore, since 2020, Joris has been assisting with the Gamefeel course at the Hogeschool Voor De Kunst Utrecht, a program tailored for budding Game Design students.

Mathijs Konings is the Chief Product Officer at Tover, where he leads a talented team in developing innovative products and services that greatly improve the lives of people living with dementia and other cognitive challenges. With a strong commitment to design thinking and human-centered principles, Mathijs and his team create engaging experiences that foster social interaction, physical activity, and mental stimulation.Having built and managed high-performing teams throughout his career, Mathijs has successfully guided numerous products from concept to market launch. His extensive expertise in product management, design, and innovation, combined with a deep understanding of emerging technologies and market trends, is an important driving factor for Tover’s success.Under Mathijs’s leadership, Tover’s products have gained widespread acclaim and are sold in markets worldwide, including North Western Europe, Northern America, and Australia. This global presence reflects the universal demand for their impactful solutions.Passionate about making a positive impact, Mathijs works closely with customers and stakeholders to ensure Tover’s products surpass expectations and deliver tangible results. His team actively transforms the lives of individuals with cognitive challenges and enhances the quality of care they receive.

Céline Veltman is a versatile developer and artist based in Utrecht, Netherlands. She is best known for her work on the DLC’s of Hidden Folks and various other games mostly taking lead in Art Direction – She can often be found experimenting with various mediums; hardware, photography, animation, or materials like ceramics, paints and pencils. She is currently Game director, Art director and Lead Game Designer on the digital playground sandbox game Curiosmos about the creation of planets, solar systems and the universe.She creates audio teams from scratch and manages them, working with outsourcing audio specialists from all over the world. Her real passion is implementation of effective and elegant audio strategies for developers to save time and money when creating great experiences.

Gino’s work had a big impact on game physics and many of his discoveries are still a common component in current game physics engines. He developed an early version of the SOLID collision detection library to support his thesis, and opened the source code to the public as GNU software. By public demand, Gino started to offer the SOLID library under commercial licensing and founded Dtecta Middleware in 2001. SOLID has been applied in top-selling game console titles, such as the Formula One series for PlayStation 2.He also shared his ideas in a number of journals and books, and is best known as author of the book  Collision Detection in Interactive 3D Environments.

Len is a reporter for Dutch national daily NRC. Beyond answering practical questions about sustainability, privacy and lifestyle for the paper’s Slim Leven desk, she has also served as the paper’s video games reporter since 2017.  Previously, she covered tech and video games for such publications as AD.nl, NU.nl, Bright and OneWorld. As a critic, she is interested in issues around diversity, storytelling through interactivity, and the intersection of video games, art and technology.

Paul was only 30 when he suffered a severe brain hemorrhage. Thanks to his rehabilitation he is able to participate in numerous things again. However, his hobby of playing video games remains a challenge. In 2016 he founded the HiPerks Foundation with which he wants to stimulate game development for people with disabilities.

Ressa is the CEO and founder of Gameowdio, an audio outsourcing studio based in Rotterdam. Her main focus is audio direction, visioning and management. Starting 2009, Ressa has worked as game audio generalist: freelanced, directed audio at Aterdux Entertainment (Legends of Eisenwald), worked as audio producer for TinyBuild (Secret Neighbor, Totally Reliable Delivery Service, Party Hard), now one of her biggest goals is building audio team at CM Games (Nitro Nation franchise, Into The Radius).She creates audio teams from scratch and manages them, working with outsourcing audio specialists from all over the world. Her real passion is implementation of effective and elegant audio strategies for developers to save time and money when creating great experiences.

Willem works as Media Manager Games and Online at Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld & Geluid. In particular, he specializes in video games, interactive media and film. Willem is actively working on the archiving and preservation of games and for this he maintains contacts with various game makers, publishers, journalists and employees from the (inter)national games industry. In his spare time he writes about games, plays board games and practices archery.Willem has been working for Beeld & Geluid since February 2021, where he started as a Storyteller for the new Media Museum. In this, he was active for the “play” and “tell” zones, which opened in February 2023. He completed a bachelor’s degree in Film and Television Studies at Utrecht University with a minor in Game Studies. During this bachelor, he worked for Nintendo of Europe in Frankfurt am Main as a Digital Media Creator. During the Master’s degree in Journalism & Media at the University of Amsterdam, he worked for the educational children’s program ‘Het Klokhuis’ as a researcher.

Bertine is a freelance game writer and designer with more than a decade of industry experience. She’s worked with AAA and indie companies alike as well as both original and established IPs. Besides working with other companies, Bertine also designs on her own games and enjoys creating things both silly and profound.

Juney is a Development Director at Electronic Arts, where she supports 25+ EA franchises & teams like FC, Battlefield, The Sims and Apex Legends with finding, signing and optimising external development engagements with uniquely diverse partners worldwide. She is also the Founder & Director of the Game Production Community, a 5.000+ member B2B game industry community of producers, project managers and leaders focused on exchanging knowledge & experiences in pursuit of sustainable, diverse, and profitable game development practices.She was formerly a Business Owner at Paradox Interactive, responsible for business development & sales of a portfolio of 60+ titles generating $ 15m USD revenue YoY. Prior to that, she was Lead Producer at SOEDESCO Publishing, building the publishing pipeline & team for PC & console to support the worldwide release of 50+ games digitally & at retail, while also developing & running the in-house porting team. She obtained her Game and Media Technology MSc. degree at Utrecht University, alongside organising and running a variety of large scale events in the game development industry.

Martijn holds a degree in management of technological innovation and is a vivid game enthusiast with nearly 20 years experience in the industry. He initially contributed to the success of Electronic Arts as marketing lead for Southern Europe. He then was entrusted with the responsibility of managing the publishing operations of EA in the Benelux. Currently, Martijn serves as general manager of Video Games Federation Netherlands, Board member of DGA and BEN (Branchevereniging Esports Nederland) where he focuses on driving collaboration, shaping and influencing policies, regulations, and growth opportunities for the Dutch videogames industry.